be crative!

I've been listening to another broadcast of BBC Radio Four's series Four Thought, this time a talk given by Gerard Darby, freelance writer, researcher and trainer in creativity. In his speech he argues that present-day education damages creativity.
Darby uses the words creative, creatively and creativity several times. Listen to a random selection:

credit: BBC

While I was writing this I saw that Jack Windsor Lewis had also noticed the compression of these words (see his blog # 347).

BTW: Mr Darby seems to be very fond of compressing words. Here are some more:

/sluːʃn/ - solution
/kɒntri/ - contrary
/əpriːʃeɪt/ - appreciate
/ɪnɪʃtɪv/ - initiative

an alde teerme

Correption

Leaving aside some extinct meanings correption according to OED is a term used to describe "[s]hortening in grammar" (OED, lemma CORREPTION). The first attested use dates back to the 1871 book The Philology of the English Tongue (London) by the philologist John Earle (1824-1903). On page 539 of said book we read:

John Wells in vol.1 of his Accents of English writes on page 241:

"The phenomenon [= smoothing] has sometimes been referred to as 'levelling' (so Jones 1956: §414). But this term usually implies something rather different. I did for a time think of calling it 'correption' (mindful of the Latin grammarians' phrase vocalis ante vocalem corripitur), but have now decided to propose Smoothing as a more generally acceptable term."

In case your mind is not full of Latin grammar rules: Take the Latin verb audīre (to hear) with a long i-vowel. The 2nd person singular present tense subjunctive form is audias with a short i-vowel due to the following vowel which shortens the preceding one. For this shortening process the Latin grammarians used the verb corripere and by substantival derivation correptio.

If truth be told it must be noted that Henry Sweet had decided to propose the term 'smoothing' much earlier, namely in his 1888 book A History of English Sounds from the Earliest Period (Oxford) in §70 on page 22:

 Mention is again made by Sweet in his 1891 publication A New English Grammar (Oxford) in §720:

a grand old English tradition

This is an off-topic blog entry:

I've just listened to a talk given by Matthew Engel (/eŋgl/), former Financial Times correspondent in Washington, on the topic of Americanisms in British English. You can listen to this talk on BBC Radio Four. What amused me - and this is the reason why I'd like to share it with you - is the way Matthew Engel finished his talk:

The most irritating thing of all comes when I do something while driving that upsets another motorist who gives me the finger. That is a very offensive gesture. Please, any of you: If I ever cut in front of you on the motorway, I expect, I insist, I demand that you give me two fingers in the grand old English tradition.

Should you drive on an English motorway, please, comply with Mr Engel's demand. And make sure that the palm faces you.

sometimes /præps/ is /pæps/

Richard Dawkins

credit: Shane Pope

In his recommendable blog #423 of the 4th of October, in which Jack Windsor Lewis writes about /r/ elision, he mentions a BBC radio interview between Jim Al-Khalili and Richard Dawkins, professor of evolutionary biology and author of books such as The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, probably two of his best-known books. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on the 4th of September.

Fairly at the beginning of this interview Al-Khalili asks Richard Dawkins: "With these two books do you think you hit a nerve or need among the general population?" To which Richard Dawkins replies: "Two different nerves I suppose. I mean The Selfish Gene is about biology, is about evolutionary biology and although at time I thought I was just laying out what was a kind of orthodoxy and it turns out that perhaps that wasn't quite right."

What is interesting here and what Jack refers to in his blog is the way Dawkins pronounces the word highlighted in my transcript - "perhaps".

Listen to the section "[...] and it turns out that perhaps that wasn't quite right."

There's no /r/-sound audible.

The 'big three' do not mention this informal variant pronunciation, although they do record /præps/. You needn't imitate the r-less variant, but should be prepared to stumble across it.

woe a knee

credit: Ric James

John Maidment in his blog of the 18th of September rants about one of Jeremy Paxman's questions in the academic quiz show University Challenge. Paxman asked the two teams:
""Wo ai ni" , "te dua" and "t'estimo" are the respective Mandarin, Albanian, Catalan equivalents of which three word English sentence?" The bone of contention was Paxman's pronunciation of the Mandarin sentence, which should have been /wɔ ai ni/, but was ejaculated by Paxman as /wəʊ  eɪ niː/. If I had to ask this question I would have needed a transcription. Why didn't the team behind the quiz show provide it?

Be it as it may - if you care to hear the question, here it is: 

credit: BBC Two

Beloved - not only by Toni Morrison

'Beloved' is the title of a novel by Toni Morrison, the famous American writer and Nobel Prize Laureate.

cover of the 1st ed.

I am interested in the pronunciation of 'beloved' (of course). What do the three top dogs tell us?
LPD3 has this (1st the UK pron, then the US):

Although the main entry is transcribed with a third syllable (the KIT vowel being recommended), both speakers pronounce only two. According to the accompanying text the latter pron is restricted to the predicative use of beloved.

EPD18 is  a bit more confusing. We're first given the transcription of the predicative use with 2 sylls, but the speakers of the two model accents present us with different versions (again 1st UK, then US):

As regards the attributive usage, the prons match at least one of the transcriptions. Listen:

What's our maverick got to say?

credit: ODP, lemma beloved

 As you see, the 3rd syllable is always optional.

Confused by all this? My advice to EFL speakers is this rule of thumb:

If beloved is used attributively, as a noun or in formulaic speech, pronounce it /biˈlʌvɪd/:

• I was in my beloved London;
• in memory of our dearly beloved daughter;
• it was a gift from her beloved;
• Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today ...

If it is used predicatively, use /biˈlʌvd/:

• she was beloved by all her readers;
• Prof X, much beloved by his students, died in an accident.

But don't be surprised or disappointed if NSs don't comply with this recommendation.

One last question and an answer to it: How is the title of T. Morrison's book pronounced?

/biˈlʌvɪd/ (or /biˈlʌvəd/).

search keywords

The blogger software enables me to see the keywords readers of my blog use to search my postings (don't worry - it's totally anonymous; I can't relate the search words to the user's URL).
Today one of my readers searched for "Kraut idioms".
Dear Madam or Sir, I feel honoured, flattered and flabbergasted.

a wicked witch

As you can see in the title to this blog entry, it's another ed-word I've selected for you: wicked.

Firstly, there is the past tense (or present perfect or past perfect) of a verb to wick - wicked. One of its meanings is described by the OED a) in its intransitive use as "to migrate by capillary action" and b) in its transitive use as "to absorb or draw off (liquid) through capillary action". Here's one sample sentence for each usage:
a) the material allows sweat to wick away from the body;
b) the fabric wicks moisture very quickly.

Secondly, there's the adjective wicked in the sense of 'having a wick' (= the piece of thread in a candle) as in
c) he used a double-wicked candle.

Thirdly, wicked can also be an adjective (and an adverb or noun) in the sense of 'behaving badly' as in
d) she's the typical wicked stepmother
or meaning 'very good' as in
e) this is a wicked bike.

The pronunciation of wicked varies with the meaning of the word. Try these:

1. they sell two-wicked candles;
2. he wrote a wicked book;
3. the air wicked away the sweat that trickled down my body;
4. Emmet had a wicked grin on his face;
5. he's become one of the most wicked on the globe;
6. the GoPro Hero HD is a wicked camera;
7. I just bought a wicked new computer game;
8. Okay, let's go to the beach now. - Wicked!;
9. a double-wicked lamp gives more light;

credit: www.funshop.ch

There was a crooked man ...

credit: Trisha Fawyer

The next word ending in -ed is crooked. Besides crook as a noun (designating a criminal or a shepherd's stick) there's the verb to crook (meaning to bend) and the adjective crooked characterising an object as bent or twisted or a person as dishonest. The adjective (and the noun derived from it) is pronounced /krʊkɪd/, /krʊkəd/, the verb form crooked follows the usual rule and is pronounced /krʊkt/.

A few sample sentences:

1. your tie's crooked;
2. she crooked a finger at him;
3. these crooked streets are a maze;
4. all of them are crooked;
5. he crooked his elbow;
6. Marcus Duvall is a crooked cop;
7. braces will correct the crooked smile;
8. the picture's crooked to one side;
9. the crooked shall be made straight (Isaiah 40:4);